A Partner Thing
by Bimadabomi
Summary: A series of one-shots that take place during different times in Booth & Brennan's relationship.
1. Ordinary

When he was a kid, Booth lived a summer day just like many other summer days before it. He woke up and his mom made him and his brother pancakes for breakfast, then they hurried down to the vacant lot a couple blocks away to stake their claim before the older boys got there and spent the entire afternoon playing baseball, stopping only for a break when the ice-cream truck would pass by just after one. It was an ordinary day. Even when he and his brother stopped to buy bubble gum on the way home, it was an ordinary day. Even when he stuck an extra wad of gum in his pocket, without paying for it, and was caught and reprimanded and forced to put it back by the cashier, it was an ordinary day.

But it ended up not being so ordinary, because he would always remember this day. He would always remember this day as the day he realized he was never going to break a rule, because there could be harsh consequences. And somehow, he always thought this day played a little something into his eventual place in the FBI. But the day had seemed just like any other at the time.

Years later at the FBI, Booth was assigned to a particularly gruesome and gritty case. A body found at Arlington National Cemetery, the skill smashed into pieces. He'd barely had a chance to read over the case file when Cullen informed him, "Consult Dr. Brennan at the Jeffersonian on this one, Booth."

He immediately protested. "A squint? Is that really necessary?"

Cullen glared at him. "Do you think you're going to get anywhere with a skull that's smashed into a million pieces on your own?" Booth opened his mouth to speak. "Dr. Brennan is Igood/I. She can really help us on this one. I don't care what your personal opinion of her is."

"It's just that after the last case…"

"Consult her," Cullen interrupted, leaving the room.

It wasn't necessarily his personal opinion of her that was the problem - although, he did find her highly hard to tolerate and would much prefer to not have to be bothered with her - but also her personal opinion of him after their last case. He believed that her last words to him had been, "And don't ever ask for my help again." Booth sighed and looked through the case file for a few moments before taking the phone and dialing the Jeffersonian Institute.

"Zach Addy!" an entirely too cheerful voice answered. Booth suddenly remembered the young, gawky assistant.

"Yeah, hi. I'm looking for Dr. Brennan?"

"May I ask who is calling?" Zach asked immediately, as he'd been programmed to do.

"Agent Booth from the Federal –"

"Oh, Agent Booth," Zack interrupted. "Sorry. Dr. Brennan's not available at the moment."

"Well, tell her to give me a call when she can, then, will you?" Booth asked, sighing as he hung up the phone. He had a feeling this was going to be a long case.

When the day passed by without any word from Dr. Brennan herself, Booth tried calling again, only to once again find himself speaking to Zack, who once again said she was unavailable. After three calls like this over two days, Booth was pretty sure he wasn't going to get anywhere and pretty sure that he was getting the run around.

Luckily, he happened to have good contacts in the FBI and was able to find out that Dr. Brennan was in Guatemala. When Zack still wouldn't tell him how he could contact her, Booth called up a friend working homeland security and asked him for a favor.

"Just, detain her at the airport, so I can get to her. Her assistant won't put me through and my boss ordered me to work with her on this case."

"What'd you do to her, man?" Rob snickered. "Her assistant won't even put you through?"

"Will you just please stop her? Check her bags. She probably has some kind of bone or bone tool in there that you can use as an excuse to hold her."

"Alright, man. But you owe me," Rob decided, still chuckling at Booth's predicament.

It had seemed like an ordinary day at the time. A frustrating ordinary day, of course. An ordinary day where he went to work, was handed a case, and spent his day trying to track someone who could help him down – only in this case, it wasn't a suspect or a witness.

When he finally got to Bones at the airport, he was just glad to be a step closer to solving this case, a step closer to catching this murderer. They could solve the case, lock up the bad guy, and she could go back to her lab and he could go back to his office and they could be done with each other again.

It had seemed like an ordinary day at the time. But looking back, it was the beginning of everything that would form the rest of his life.


	2. Ring

He's not sure what possesses him to buy the ring. All he knows is that he feels like it's necessary. He knows that she doesn't believe in marriage and all of that. And he's told her he's fine with that, with not needing to marry her to be happy. And truth be told, he is. He's fine living the rest of his life with her without exchanging I dos because after all this time he's come to see her point. She's enough. They're enough.

But what does bother him is the lack of an expression of his commitment on his part. He feels like the proposal is necessary, even if just so she can turn him down. After all, if she were anyone else, he would've proposed months ago already. Something just so she knows that he's serious about his commitment to her, to them. Not that she doesn't know that already - but when they don't get married, he wants it to be because she doesn't want to be married, because it was her choice, not because he never told her he wanted to marry her.

Still, he doesn't understand why he's buying a ring. He's likely going to waste a month's worth of pay on something she doesn't even want and won't even wear or accept.

He takes Parker with him to pick out a ring. He explains to Parker that he's going to propose to Bones, but that she may not want to have a whole big wedding, she might just be content being with them forever without all of that. Parker is still young enough that he accepts this without a second thought, understanding that either way it means Bones is going to be in his life, and he likes that idea a lot.

Once he has the ring, he carries it around with him. He's not sure how he wants to do this. He knows, of course, that he isn't going to go about this in some over-the-top romantic way. It has to just be a quick, casual thing. But he has to pick the right moment for that, and in the meantime he's afraid she's going to find it. That's the worst thing that could happen. She would find it and pitch a fit about marriage and proposals and all that before he even got to say a word to her. If he's going to do it, he has get to her before her logical rational mind has a chance to jump in with all the facts she has about why marriage and proposals are archaic.

He's in her office one day, two weeks after buying the ring. He was supposed to meet her for lunch – a regular occurrence – but she's so wrapped up in something she's got going on and he's been sitting on her couch waiting for fifteen minutes already. She's got bones from a 17th century warrior or something equally boring and meaningless to him. She's babbling on and on about it, pacing around the room as she looks for her notes, hurrying over to the computer to check her research. She's wearing her lab coat even though she's not even doing anything in the lab and her hair is pulled back into the usual ponytail that often accompanies said lab coat. She laughs at something she's just said to him, as if it was ridiculous of her to think such a thought, and a strand of hair falls in front of her face as she crosses her arms over her chest.

And a thought occurs to him - this is it. This is the moment because this is her. This is the woman he fell stupid in love with and the woman he wants to marry, right here.

Or, he corrects himself, the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, marriage or not.

And he knows that's the truth. He loves her. He loves her and it doesn't matter to him if they have the ceremony and sign the paper, if they wear each other's rings and use the titles of 'husband' and 'wife.'

Before he knows what he's doing, he's grabbing the box he's been carrying around in his pocket for weeks. For all the times she doesn't understand things, she easily figures out what's going on, the small, black velvet box tipping her off.

"Booth…" she says. He wonders if she's about to stop him before he gets started, but really, it appears she hasn't thought out what she's going to say beyond his name. He realizes despite weeks of knowing he was going to do something like this, he hasn't really planned out what he's going to say either.

"Just hear me out," he insists quickly, and she looks down at the ring and back up at him and nods. "I know you don't believe in marriage. I know that. But at the same time, you know that I do. So for me to never propose to you, even if I know you're going to say no, that would be like… I need you to know, even if you don't want to say yes, that I want to marry you. That I want to spend my life with you. And I'm planning on doing that, even if you say no." She smiles at him shyly and glances down at her shoes before looking back up at him. "And maybe this can just be a proposal to spend our lives together, if you want." She's studying him intently, and he has absolutely no idea what's going on in her head and that terrifies him. "So. Here it is. You can turn down the proposal, we can toss the ring and we can forget this ever happened – while still living our lives together. You can turn down the proposal and take the ring as a symbol of my commitment. You can accept the proposal and take the ring, of course. That's fine, too. Or you can accept the proposal and we can still toss the ring. But no matter what you choose, you need to know I plan on spending the rest of my life with you." There. He's done. He's said it all. Almost. "I love you," he adds, even though it doesn't seem to fit right there.

She's quiet for a few moments, moments that seem longer to him than they probably were in actuality.

"Yes." She says it simply and easily, as if it's obvious.

"Yes… what?" he asks, unsure. Yes, she's going to turn him down? Yes she wants to toss the ring? Yes she'll… marry him?

This question makes her laugh, and she rolls her eyes at him. She steps forward, uncrossing her arms and playing with his tie. "Yes, I'll marry you."

He blinks at her, unbelieving. He had never really allowed himself to believe this was a possible outcome.

"You… will?" he mutters, allowing his surprise to be evident. Brennan laughs again, amused in the fact that the one who proposed had turned into the one who was taken aback and surprised.

"You said I can accept the proposal and get rid of the ring," she explained. "You want to marry me just to be with me, not to claim me with flashy jewelry or prove to other males that you won me," she explained with a shrug. "And I've learned relationships are about compromise and I know marriage is something you believe in, and there are a lot of rational reasons in favor of marriage. So, yes."

"So yes, you'll marry me and we'll toss the ring?" he asks, thinking of the ring going into a river or lake or some kind of lab experiment.

"No, I want the ring," she says quickly, looking down at it, and now it's his turn to laugh at her. "What? It's pretty," she says petulantly, like a child, and he shakes his head and kisses her before reaching down and sliding the ring onto her finger. She'd thought about her grandmother's ring and how she always wore it after her father gave it to her, to keep a connection with her family. She sees this ring the same way, as an object she can have on her at all times to feel close to him, even when he's not around. "Small wedding," she adds quickly. "Small. You and me, of course. Parker, your family, my dad and Russ, Angela and Hodgins and Cam. And Sweets, I suppose. Maybe a few other really close friends. A simple dress. A simple ceremony. Non-religious."

Booth chuckled at her list of demands. "Deal." She gave him a smile and allowed him to tug her closer, pulling her in for another kiss. "I was sure you would slug me."

She laughed. "I've never believed in marriage. I've always believed in you. There's a good middle ground in there somewhere."

He places a kiss on her forehead. "So, lunch?"

"Yes. I'm starving."

"Well you and your old 17th century bones slowed us down, Babe."

"My bones?" she retorted. "What about your whole little proposal here?"

"It was the only way I could get you to stop talking about the Dutch Revolt."

Brennan shook her head at her - fiance? There's a word she never thought she would use - but felt a sense of contentment wash over her. This was right.

"Hey, let's go out the back way. If Angela sees this ring we'll never get to eat."


	3. Ankle

"You're not supposed to be up."

His voice startles her and once she recovers, she turns to glare at him. Maybe letting him have a key wasn't such a good idea after all (although it _had_ seemed a good idea when he let himself in last weekend and woke her up in a very nice way).

"God, Booth. Startling me like that will only serve to make me injure my other ankle," Brennan replies, annoyed. "I was just looking for something to drink."

He rolls his eyes and moves towards her. "Yeah, yeah. You're not supposed to be up. Back to bed."

She pouts a little. "You know, usually when you say that the idea of going back to bed is much more exciting."

He gives her a knowing little smile and then turns serious again. "You knew I was coming by to check on you, you couldn't wait to get a drink?"

"I broke my ankle, I'm not a complete invalid," she insists, filling a glass with water now that she has made it to the sink anyway. "I was thirsty. I came to get water."

"Okay. I know. I just don't want you to be in pain."

"I'm not in pain." She turns to hobble her way back towards her bedroom, and flinches at the pain that suddenly shoots through her. "I'm fine."

"Clearly. Can I help you?" She watches him for a moment, trying to decide between comfort and her pride. Looking at his face and seeing the concern for her that lies there, and taking note of the fact that he's asking if he can help her before he takes away her independence and her pride, she gives in and nods.

"Okay. Fine." Booth smiles and kisses her on the forehead before lifting her up into his arms. She yelps in surprise – she was thinking something more along the lines of helping her _walk _to the bedroom, but this works, too.

To her surprise, he doesn't set her down in her bed. Instead her warns her of his intention to put her on her feet so that she will be ready to avoid pressure on her ankle, and she watches him curiously as he moves towards her bed and begins to straighten the sheets and fluff the pillows. She hadn't slept very well last night, and the bed was a disaster, she had to admit. The sheet was crumpled towards the bottom of the mattress, and the comforter was crooked, not even covering the bottom part of the bed. The pillow she prefers had a dent in it and the other pillow had fallen to the floor when she tried to extricate herself from the bed this morning to look for water.

"Jeez, Bones, you really did a number on your bed. What'd it ever do to you?" he teases, and she laughs a little and gives him an appreciative smile. As much as she likes to pretend she's not in pain when she is in order to keep up her independent front, she knows it wouldn't have been easy for her to fix the bed on her own.

When Booth is finished, he lifts her again, despite the fact that she's now two feet away from the bed and settles her down comfortably in the middle of it and pulls the blankets back over her.

"Thank you," she says softly, and they're both a little surprised that she doesn't resist the care he's giving her and insisting that she can pull the covers over her herself.

"Sure," he replies. He leans down and kisses her gently and says softly into her ear, "I love you."

He's said it before, and she's said before, but she knows this is one of the times where she's not required to say it back. It's given her an odd sense of peace to know that every time one of them says it, a response is not expected or required. In some ways it keeps it from losing its meaning, and it keeps her from feeling like it's turned into the definition of love that she doesn't believe in.

"I know," she replies simply, and they share a smile that makes her forget about her ankle for just a minute, even though it is time for another pain pill and she can feel the slight throbbing. Booth seems to realize this, and puts the pill bottle next to the empty pitcher of water on the night table but doesn't do more than that, knowing she can and wants to do it on her own.

"Okay, I've gotta go, but you call me if you need anything," he says, kissing her once again, this time on the nose. "You promise?"

"Booth…"

"No, don't start with the 'I'll be fine,' and 'I can manage on my own,' stuff again. I know you will be, and I know you can. I'm just saying, call me if you need anything. Promise?"

She rolls her eyes. "Okay. Fine. I promise."

"I'll get you another pitcher of water so you don't have to make the journey to the kitchen again." She nods. "Do you have a book?" he calls from the kitchen as he's getting her water.

"Yes, five, actually. That you left here last night. I was too tired from the medication to read." He nods when he returns and sets the pitcher of water on her night table. She had refused to let him stay with her last night, because was supposed to take Parker to school this morning since they had a late start due to the snow, and it was ridiculous for him to get up early, probably waking her up with him, just to have to fight the weather in order get Parker and take him to school. He'd accepted begrudgingly, and had promised her he'd be back in the morning, figuring after the day they had had – chasing down a suspect and breaking her ankle in the process, followed by a long night at the emergency room – she would be exhausted and just sleep anyway. "Will you stay tonight, though?" she asks softly.

Booth's face practically lights up, pleased that she asked and he doesn't have to fight her on it. "You bet."

She nods, and they both realize that this is the first time in their nine weeks of this... relationship... that they will actually _sleep together_ without sleeping together. "And you better call me if anything exciting happens at work."

He laughs, because she's so… Bones, and her face is so serious. "You got it, Babe."

She's long ago stopped fighting his nicknames. She fought Bones for a while and it stuck anyway. She fought 'babe' and 'baby' and 'sweetheart' for a (short) while, too, but Booth is Booth and he calls her them anyway. He knows better than to use these terms of endearment at work or around their friends, so she doesn't mind them so much. In fact, a part of her might even like them, but she doesn't admit that.

She does, however, admit that she realizes her day is made a little better when he calls her to check on her, and again later to tell her a funny story about a witness he talked to. And that her day is made a lot better when Angela brings her a sandwich from the diner for lunch that, despite no one telling her so, she knows was Booth's doing because of the choice, and when he brings her her favorite Thai food for dinner and agrees to watch a special with her about the ancient temple system in Maui. And when he helps her get ready for bed, she doesn't resist because she knows he does it because he cares for her – loves her – so much and she has to admit, it is a lot easier to change her pajama pants with someone's help. So when they get into bed and he softly strokes her arm as he closes his eyes, prepared to drift off to sleep, she turns to kiss him and tells him, "I love you."

He opens his eyes and smiles at her. "I know, Bones. Your ankle feeling okay?"

She nods and closes her eyes, ready to drift off to sleep herself.


	4. Miracle

It's funny, Brennan thinks. Of all the things she's done in her life – all the murders she's helped solved, all the things she's studied, all the digs she's been on, all the places she's seen, even all the books she's written and all the publicity she's gained – she finds this the single most amazing thing she has ever done. Something that millions of women before her have done and millions after her will continue to do. It was the first thing she thought when they handed her this tiny, screaming little baby: _This is the most amazing thing I have ever done_. It's what her body was designed for. It's one of the commonalities between women of all cultures and all time periods, something that anthropologically has not changed very much other than cultural rituals associated with the process.

She never wanted to be a mother. Then again, she never wanted to be a lot of things (for example, Booth's partner, a wife) that were now important to her. And now that their little girl is in her arms, only hours old, she already can't imagine her life any other way. The pregnancy had been a surprise, yes, but her life had changed, she had changed, so much since the time she decided that she didn't want to have children that it wasn't an entirely unwelcome surprise.

"I don't know how to be a mother," she had admitted to Booth during one of the many times they discussed the situation. She knew it weighed on him at first, worrying about how she felt about the pregnancy, the baby, knowing it wasn't something she had ever wanted. "My own mother abandoned me at fifteen, it's not like I have a good role model to work from."

"She was a good mother up until then, wasn't she?" he asked her. And he was right. "You go with that, and by the time our kid gets to be fifteen you'll have it figured out. Promise."

She hoped that he was right. The baby in her arms was depending on her, she knew that. She knew that this child needed her to take care for it. Be the protector, the provider of every basic need the child needed to have met. She knew that this child would need her when she came home from school and the boy she liked had done something cruel like tape a Brainy Smurf to her locker (and she knew from firsthand experience Booth would be useless in understanding that, so it was up to her).

Their daughter was only hours old – five hours, to be exact, and seventeen minutes – and yet she could already see that she was going to look like her father. Booth thought she was crazy, but she could see it.

"She has symmetrical features similar to yours, and a similar bone structure," she had told him, and only he hand noticed the odd look on the nurse's face.

It was quite amazing, really, that this person who had lived inside of her for 37 weeks (or, to be precise, 36 weeks and six days) also looked so much like Booth. It was the two of them put together in one actual living, breathing human being. Until she had their daughter here, in front of her, she hadn't realized, really, how powerful that was.

"A miracle," she immediately says aloud.

"Huh?" Booth asks, turning to her. He has the remote in his hand and had been fiddling with the muted TV, trying to find out the score of the game he missed last night while his daughter made her way into the world, kicking and screaming (just like her mother).

She was a little jarred to realize that she had said her thought out loud, but so be it. "Two," she gestures between them, "become one," she gestured at the baby.

He remembers the conversation to which she was referring and smiles. "A miracle. Yeah, Bones. Our little girl is absolutely a miracle."

Brennan smiles and looks down at their daughter again. "It really is amazing how natural protective instincts immediately develop to insure that a mother protects her offspring."

Booth studies her for a minute. "That's squint talk for saying you love her."

"I suppose my feelings could be effectively stated in that manner as well, yes." She looks to Booth and admits, "I just hope I can be… what she needs."

He puts down the remote and focuses all of his attention on his partner. "Look. I've never once seen you step into a role you haven't taken by storm. You know? You can't just be a forensic anthropologist; you have to be the top forensic anthropologist in the nation. You can't just be an author; you have to be a best-selling author. You can't just be my partner; you have to be part of the team with the highest success rates in solving crimes in America." He smiles a little. As he adds, "You can't just be a wife, you but have to be the most amazing wife in the world. So the way I see it, Temperance, is that not only are you going to be a mother, you're going to be a fantastic one. She's a lucky little girl."

Brennan blushes a little, overwhelmed by all the praise. "Thank you. Although I think your description of me as a wife is more based in personal opinion than facts."

"Mmhmm. Now hand her over, you should rest."

"But, Booth…"

"You've got to be tired. Just watching what you did wore me out." She'd refused the idea of drugs right away, saying that giving birth was a natural process and that she wanted to actually experience the process of giving birth and that often times women become so drugged that it is difficult for them to push. And she wouldn't be Temperance Brennan if she hadn't added in a bit about drugs only being part of the ritual of giving birth recently from an anthropological time frame. She wasn't like most women, and Booth couldn't imagine himself with anyone else in the world.

She is still protesting her exhaustion. "I slept a little, earlier. I just want to hold her a while longer."

"You're exhausted. I can see it in your face. Now hand her over, she's part mine too, ya know."

"I know," she says, and he's not sure if she misses his sarcasm or she's ignoring it. "The structure of her cheekbone suggests that…"

"Stop admiring her bones and hand her over," he teases, and Brennan gives in, carefully shifting the baby from her arms to his. She realizes that the Tylenol the nurse had given her earlier is wearing off.

"Are you sore?" Booth asks, as if he's reading her mind.

"Just a little. I'm okay."

Booth nods. "Rest. I think the Sandman's paid you a couple visits already."

"I don't know what that means," she says sleepily, as she allows her eyes to flutter closed.

He chuckles to himself and looks down at their daughter, thinking of the things her mother is going to teach her. She won't have a clue who the Sandman is but she'll probably walk into kindergarten knowing a handful of Greek and Roman gods. It's okay, he figures. He can teach her about the Sandman and show her cartoons and movies without a basis in reality, like those with talking animals and her mother can take care of the rest.

They'll make a good team.


End file.
